Hell

The concept of a place of eternal suffering, the obverse of paradise, is one largely derivative of gnostic or Manichean notions, namely that the world is a battleground between the principles of good and evil, and these ultimate states form parts of a system of punishment and reward. Within the Christian framework the idea of the Last Judgment and its extreme consequences have become established, not only as a dominant motif of western literature and religious art, but engrained in the mind-set of the civilization. Since the English language has evolved in this framework of ideas, notions of damnation and the consigning of others to hell have become correspondingly powerful idioms. However, the general semantic development has been from the literal to the metaphorical to the trivial.

Interestingly, the term Hell itself is pagan in origin, deriving from Old Norse Hel , the goddess of the realm of the dead and the underworld in Scandinavian mythology. However, the word appears (as helle ) in Old English about 725—that is, after the conversion to Christianity—in Ælfric’s version of Genesis 37:35: “ic fare to minum sunu to helle” (“I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning” in the King James version). Hell is only used literally in Anglo-Saxon.

According to the Fathers of the Church, the majority of mankind was consigned to hell, and outside of the Catholic Church there was no salvation ( extra ecclesia nulla salus ). Further- more, cursing someone to Hell was both an ecclesiastical privilege (covered in the entry for anathema ) and a motif in folklore. Chaucer’s Friar’s Tale explores the motif of the curse “the Devil take you” coming true if it is heartfelt, describing, “The peynes of thilke [that same] cursed hous of helle” (l. 1652), clearly regarding Hell as a place. However, in the General Prologue the corrupt Summoner, who accepts payment in lieu of spiritual penance, claims that the guilty will be punished, not in the afterlife, but here and now, in monetary terms:

in his purs he sholde ypunysshed be
“Purs is the ercedekenes helle,” seyde he.
[“Money is the archdeacon’s damnation.”]
(l. 658)

Naturally, the traditional physical interpretation continued, becoming a major feature in eschatology, in architecture, literature, and drama. One of the major scenes in the medieval Miracle plays was the Gate of Hell, sometimes depicted as the mouth of a great monster devouring the damned. Shakespeare draws on this symbolism in his great tragedy of damnation, Macbeth (1605) when the Porter of Macbeth’s castle makes a number of references to “hell gate,” “devils,” saying finally, “I’ll devil-porter it no longer” (II iii 2-22). Macbeth’s villainy is marked by two significant terms Shakespeare creates for him, namely hell-kite for his massacre of Macduff’s children (IV iii 217), and hell-hound , when he is finally challenged by Macduff (V vii 32). In Christopher Marlowe’s astonishingly daring play Doctor Faustus (1592) the great scholar Faustus, epitomizing Renaissance skepticism, utters the bold challenge: “I think hell’s a fable,” to which the subtle devil Mephistophilis coolly responds, “Ay think so, Faustus, till experience change thy mind” (v 127-28). Although at the end “Hell is discovered” (revealed) in the traditional form of “a vast perpetual torture-house,” the play also shows that hell is a state of mind, a modern notion, since Mephistophilis says exasperatedly to Faustus, “Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it” (iii 78).

A related term thrown up by the violent controversies of the Reformation was rake hell , meaning “an utterly immoral or dissolute person; a vile debauchee or rake,” which the Oxford English Dictionary notes, was “in common use ca. 1550–1725.” J. Bell in 1581 attacked the whole ecclesiastical hierarchy with effective alliteration, castigating “momish [mumbling] monckes, flatteryng Friers and other such like religious rakehells” ( Haddon’s Answer to Ossory , 315). The term is largely obsolete now, having been superseded by hell-raiser .

Both Shakespeare and Ben Jonson use hell as an exclamation in secular contexts in the modern mode. Shylock’s daughter complains melodramatically in The Merchant of Venice , “Our house is hell” (II iii 2), while Jonson’s Eastward Ho! (1605) has this infuriated outburst: “What! Landed at Cuckold’s Haven! Hell and damnation!” (IV i). Although Shakespeare has the phrase “Let Fortune go to hell for it, not I” in The Merchant of Venice (III i), this is not truly the modern idiomatic use, which is recorded from 1788: “The ansare vas (excuse moy, monsieur) ‘go to h-ll, if you please’” (S. Low, Politician Outwitted I i). Peter Hausted’s play Rivall Friends (1632), acted before the king and queen, has the exclamation “Fie fie, hell is broke loose upon me.” In the conservative period of the eighteenth century, the term became less socially acceptable. Thus a group of dissolute dandies daringly called themselves in 1720 “The Hellfire Club, kept by a Society of Blasphemers,” ordering “Holy Ghost pie” at taverns. The hellfire sermon increasingly became a thing of the past. In a neat satirical sally in 1731, Alexander Pope criticized the cowardly politeness of a tame clergyman’s sermon in a wealthy establishment:

To rest, the Cushion and soft Dean invite,
Who never mentions Hell to ears polite.
( Epistle to Burlington, On the Use of Riches , ll. 149-50)

Considering the antiquity of the term, the loose use of hell as an emotive intensifier is a surprisingly modern development. The phrase What the hell is first recorded in Captain Frederick Marryat’s novel Frank Mildmay (1829) in this reticent nineteenth-century form: “What the h?brought you back again, you d?d young greenhorn?” (22). The response, “Like hell!,” used ironically or to express irritation or skepticism is late Victorian, found in Rudyard Kipling, but subsequently highly current in the United States. The idiomatic use of hell has proved extremely fruitful. The expansion that began in British English has proceeded apace in the American variety. The table below gives some sense of this development by noting the earliest recorded instances of the phrases and idioms.

The table deals with only the more familiar idioms, but there are many bizarre and picturesque phrases, such as to lead apes to hell (to die an old maid), hell and scissors! (an American exclamation, reduced in England to plain scissors!), hell is popping (hell is breaking loose), and from hell to breakfast (everywhere). Nevertheless, it is notable that since the 1930s there has been only one significant new entry, “the boss/mother in law/landlady from hell.” The fact that hell was banned in terms of the Hollywood Production Code of 1930 is significant. In the same year Hell’s Angels is recorded as a film title, presumably just evading the code. But even in 1954, in the Marlon Brando film The Wild Ones , the motorcycle gang was restyled the Black Rebels . Even more surprising was the title of the film R oad to Perdition (2002), an obviously euphemized version of the proverbial saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

As with all profane terms, euphemistic variants abound. These take three forms. The first is the distortion of the offending term, as in heck , recorded from about 1887 in British English and 1895 in American English, where it is more common. This variety also has blazes, Hades, Jesse, Sam Hill , and thunder . The second strategy is the substitution of a high-register classical equivalent, as in infernal and perdition , already alluded to, and used by Othello (III iii 90-91). Chaucer uses infernal literally in Troylus and Criseyde (ca. 1386), while his contemporary, John Lydgate uses the phrase “infernal falseness” meaning “diabolical” or “devilish” in his Fall of Princes (ca. 1439). The modern colloquial use as an intensive meaning “detestable” occurs as “the infernal bugs” in John Cooke’s How a Man May Choose a Good Wife (1602, ix 50). This usage, always predominantly British, is found in various trivial phrases like infernal cheek, infernal nonsense , and so on. Finally, in print format, there is the use of dashes or asterisks, as found in the quotation from Captain Marryat in 1829 cited above: “What the h? brought you back.” H.L. Mencken’s remark “American grammar is fast going to hell,” made in a lecture on December 1, 1939, was euphemized in the New York Journal-American the following day to “h?l.” Hugh Rawson notes: “According to a 1983 report by the American Library Association’s young-adult services division, the [book] clubs ‘may remove four-letter words including ’damn’ and ‘hell.’” He concludes: “So the Victorian strain is very much alive” (1991, 191).

Although the taboo against the term is clearly receding in contemporary usage, it remains a source of sensitivity to many. However, in African-American slang, hell can be used, like wicked , in a positive sense to mean “excellent,” “good,” “an impressive person,” while hellacious can similarly be used to mean “remarkable or outstanding.” In the other global varieties of English, such as the Australian and South African, hell is used with the comparative ease and breadth of idiom found in British English. Clearly the diminished force of the term and its increasing idiomatic range reflect the secularization of Western society.